What If Rousseau and Marx Had Not Existed?

On planet Earth of the parallel universe, two thinkers are born in Denmark
and Holland, instead of the highly influential – in our history line – France
and Germany. We are talking about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. Being
born in less influential countries, they did not have as big an impact as they
did in our world.

What could be the result of that simple change? Quite astounding: nobody would
be involuntarily poor. We'd have a world of wealthy countries, where no country
would be poor because of state intervention (forcibly making them poor). Is
this seemingly fantastic outcome possible at all? We think it is.

Poverty could be eradicated worldwide in less than two generations if the
ideas that Rousseau and Marx popularized were defeated and replaced with a
proper understanding of means
and ends, the creation of wealth, and realizing what exchange
is all about.

But there were other, lesser thinkers also. John Maynard Keynes, although
of tremendous importance in the West, wouldn't have been able to hamper the
wealth creation process with his ideas if the 400 million people that the anti-life,
anti-market, Marxist Soviet Union isolated in our world had never
happened. Moreover, we contend that social-democratic regimes such as
Nehru's in India, and all CEPAL-oriented governments in Latin America and other
parts of the underdeveloped world, would not have been as devastating had Rousseau
and Marx not provided the foundation for "mixed economy" policies
that has haunted those countries for a hundred years. "We are socialists," Hitler once
said, and as a socialist he extended his socialism to include state management
of body ownership, with catastrophic results.

What about corruption and decay? Sure, the natural tendency of states to grow
and cripple economic life would still be present if Adam Smith or even Ludwig
von Mises had become the dominant intellectual figures for mankind. But
then it could have been possible for people to rally against such things in
the same spirit that led the American revolutionaries against state aggression. With
the Rousseaunian-Marxist consensus in place in our universe, a big part of
our societies is actually working against itself. If what they hope to achieve
is prosperity and peace, the means are erroneous and will only bring about
poverty and misery.

The state reduces the amount of wealth because it extracts resources from
private producers and re-allocates it in manners which are less efficient (or
not efficient at all). It is inherently less efficient because these goods
and services are not being allocated according to what people want and therefore
their needs are not satisfied in the most expedient manner. Had they preferred
to spend the money exactly as the state decides, then there would
have been no reason at all for the intervention in the market. It is not
a coincidence that the greater the state intervention, the worse off that
people are.

And finally, let's not forget that some professions have prospered from the
fact that there are poor people in the world. Stiglitz, Chomsky,
and a myriad of ThirdWorldists (the intellectual current that sees other's
wealth as the main cause of poverty and not as an opportunity), along with
dozens of paternalistic regimes in the world, need poor people or will surely
loose their support. Will they ever allow the marvel
that capitalism is, to be replicated worldwide?